Raspberry Pi and a KVM

Not sure what the right forum should be for Raspberry Pi - Linux Kung Fu? Motherboards? Other Hardware?

At any rate, Just got one and am trying to use it with my ioGear GCS1104 KVM.Windows XP works fine with, Windows 7, Windows 8...But with Raspberry Pi, sometimes the keystrokes don't register at all, and sometimes when I try to login as the 'pi' user, it'll spit out: piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiias if I'm holding the key down.I've yet to be able to login through the KVM, but a regular USB keyboard works fine.

I did a chat session with ioGear. They said they've had no calls from anyone using a Raspberry Pi and he didn't really have any suggestions other than it may be an issue with keyboard emulation built into the KVM, with no solution.

^^ that. Powered USB. Raspberry PI is an EXTREMELY low-power device, so you shouldn't expect it to be able to handle much in the way of USB current draw.

Also you might want to be aware that right now in the Linux world "KVM" usually refers to virtualization with the Linux Kernel Virtual Machine... so when you talked about several operating systems working but not the Raspberry Pi working... well it was confusing. I wouldn't have realized you meant KVM switch if it weren't for the post above mine.

Your missing/repeated key entries sounds exactly like a typical issue with insufficient power to the keyboard over USB from the Pi. Assuming that's the case, the safest fix is using a self-powered USB hub like dredphul said. I'm able to run my Pi with a cheap MS wired keyboard and mouse when I had the Pi connected by a y-cable to draw power from two desktop USB ports simultaneously. But the powered hub is a better bet. Just get one of the 4-port models, those tend to be the most compatible and don't trigger any weird USB issues with the Pi.

Bummer. How many machines and what devices are you sharing over this KVM switch? What's your setup? It might be easier in the long run to just ssh into the Pi from another terminal that works with your keyboard/mouse. -Or-This USB KVM is known to work with the Pi, according to the wiki. You might be able connect one side to the Pi and the other to your other machine or the IOGear KVM. I don't really want to send you after more and more peripherals without a guarantee of results, though.

Bummer. How many machines and what devices are you sharing over this KVM switch? What's your setup? It might be easier in the long run to just ssh into the Pi from another terminal that works with your keyboard/mouse.

That's probably what I'll end up doing. I can use SSH and VNC from my Windows 8 system.I have 2 PC's connected to the KVM. My home Windows 8 PC and my company's Windows XP laptop (I work from home).

Quote:

This USB KVM is known to work with the Pi, according to the wiki. You might be able connect one side to the Pi and the other to your other machine or the IOGear KVM.

The kernel is the same on the RPi across the board, so as long as you have the updated hwpack's (or the appropriate package in Arch), then you're as new as the kernel gets. Looking into dmesg output of USB issues might help solve some things. FWIW, I saw similar issues with a MS BT wireless keyboard with the dongle connected directly.

No luck.I ran sudo apt-get upgrade and it did indeed apply some updates.Unfortunately the problem still exists. I even went to Fry's yesterday and got a different powered USB hub to try. It was a bit of an impulse buy, though, and now that I've read Amazon reviews of it, I should probably try one more before giving up.

Yes, Raspbian.But I've gotten to a point where it's no longer worth the trouble.Even with a dedicated mouse and keyboard, it's slow and clunky - but of course that's what you get for $35.I'd rather run a virtual machine and be done with it.If these things were capable of RAM upgrades so you could do something like running an Oracle RAC database with a couple of them, it would be worth investing the time and effort.

Also you might want to be aware that right now in the Linux world "KVM" usually refers to virtualization with the Linux Kernel Virtual Machine... so when you talked about several operating systems working but not the Raspberry Pi working... well it was confusing. I wouldn't have realized you meant KVM switch if it weren't for the post above mine.

This. KVM was a bad choice of name for a new hypervisor, but what's done is done and we should all be calling out KVM switches as 'KVM switches' at least.

In 1989, a random of the journalistic persuasion asked hacker Paul Boutin “What do you think will be the biggest problem in computing in the 90s?” Paul's straight-faced response: “There are only 17,000 three-letter acronyms.”